


Versions of Us

by stoplightglow



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Stargazing, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 17:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoplightglow/pseuds/stoplightglow
Summary: Maybe there are versions of them where things went the right way.





	Versions of Us

**Author's Note:**

> a microscopic examination of something much bigger. hope you enjoy.
> 
> thank you to [nat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corruptedkid) for beta.

They’re laid out on the hood of Frank’s grandfather’s ‘67 Impala, the classic cherry red type that could hold its own in a car auction if its paint job wasn’t so scratched and if Frank and Gerard didn’t spend every Saturday night slowly pressing dents into it. Gerard is smoking slower than usual — the stars are really out tonight, and he wants to watch them wink before his grey cloud gets in the way. He knows fuck-all about constellations, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re beautiful.

“I went to this lecture last week,” Frank says, and Gerard lolls his head to the side to watch the words come out in a puff of smoke. “About, like, the multiverse? I think it was for astronomy and astrophysics. Real interesting.”

He sticks his cigarette back in his mouth after that, and Gerard gets stuck staring at him, even though he knows Frank won’t continue until Gerard acknowledges what he’s said. Frank’s always got off-the-wall shit like this on his mind; the new apartment he moved into last spring is right off of the Rutgers campus, and he’s constantly sneaking into lecture halls even though he isn’t enrolled. Gerard’s tried to talk some sense into him before, telling him that if he’s so interested in what these professors have to say he should just buck up and apply already, or at least look into a community college. The advice always goes ignored. It frustrates Gerard, because Frank could do so much better than a barista job and open-mic nights. Deep down, though, he thinks he gets it — Frank just wants to know things for himself. He doesn’t want to have to prove it to anyone else.

“Tell me about it, then,” Gerard says finally, because Frank is almost down to his filter and making no moves towards grabbing a new one. Gerard’s own smoke is smoldering in the ashtray they’d brought out, forgotten. 

“Turns out the multiverse and the universe are different things. Which I guess I should have expected, but.” Frank finally wisens up and puts out his stub of a cigarette, and once the smoke dissipates, Gerard has no choice but to look him in the eye. “So the universe, in theory, means everything, right? But we don’t really use it that way. When we talk about the universe, we usually just mean the stuff that our Big Bang created. Because we’re narcissists, or whatever.”

“How do you remember all this?” Gerard can’t help but ask. “Do you take notes at these things?”

“What? No.” Frank blinks at him, then seems to reconsider. “Sometimes I bring a notebook so it looks like I’m supposed to be there, but no, not usually. I don’t write anything down. It just sticks.”

“Right, sorry.” Gerard doesn’t understand how Frank’s mind works, not in all the years since they’d met in high school and certainly not now. That’s probably how they’ve put up with each other for so long. “So, the multiverse?”

“The multiverse is a group of all those universes,” Frank says. “Like, everything our Big Bang made, and everything every other Big Bang made in every nook and cranny of space. And since it’s always getting bigger, the multiverse could basically be limitless.”

“That’s a lot of aliens.” Gerard squints up at the stars. He imagines them moving like UFOs. 

“Yeah, we talked about that.” Frank’s eyes are wide as he stares up, like he expects the sky to open up and swallow him whole. It’s incredible, how he never hides his wonder. “There could be aliens that look  _ just like us. _ More likely than not, actually.”

“You’re talking about parallel universes.” Gerard’s watched the Discovery channel before, okay. 

“Yeah.” Frank grins at him, and that alone sends a rush of satisfaction through Gerard that makes his toes curl. “God, I fucking love that idea. All those possibilities branching off of what we know? Off of each other? There could be so much shit out there, and the version we’re living is just one of the infinite sides of the dice.”

“Die. Singular,” Gerard corrects automatically, then feels like an asshole. He looks away and reaches for his pack to distract him. He’s less twitchy after he lights up and takes a drag. “You really think there are parallels of us?”

“Wouldn’t it be kind of self-centered if I didn’t?”

Frank is probably the first person ever to tie egotism and parallel universe theory together, and Gerard takes a second to listen to his own heartbeat in his ears, because fuck. Frank shouldn’t still be fascinating after all this time. He  _ shouldn’t. _

“The professor didn’t talk about this at the lecture, but.” When their eyes meet again, there’s something imploring in Frank’s, and Gerard recognizes the shift in his voice. This is the part where Frank runs out of facts and turns to his own mind instead, where he becomes vulnerable. This is the part where Gerard gets to see the side of him that he bottles up until Saturday nights, all the thoughts he keeps close to his chest and under his pillow and tangled up in the wires of his own head. “I think there’s something nihilistic to that. We could get struck by lightning and turn into superheroes and save the fucking world here, but in the universe next door, we might be grocery baggers. Whatever we do, we’re doing it differently somewhere else. So however this ends up, it doesn’t really matter.”

As soon as he’s done talking, he looks a little lost, and Gerard has to ball up the hem of his shirt in his fist to keep from reaching out and touching him. It’s easier once the expression wipes clear, but the curl of hair peeking out from behind Frank’s ear is still ridiculously tempting. Gerard bites the inside of his cheek. 

It takes him a minute to realize Frank is waiting for him to speak. He feels heat on the back of his neck and hopes his silence wasn’t too obvious. “Yeah, that could be true.”

He must not pull it off, or maybe Frank’s known him too long. “You think it’s bullshit.”

“I guess I’m more of an optimist than you.” Which is something Gerard never thought he’d say. It’s easier, though, sweeter on his tongue than what he really feels: that parallel universes or not, lightning-struck superheroes or not, what they have here matters. Gerard doesn’t know how it possibly fucking  _ couldn’t, _ not with the toes of Frank’s battered Converse swinging just out of reach of Gerard’s own and the way his eyes look like liquid gold in the light of Gerard’s cherry, not with the end-of-autumn breeze giving them goosebumps and how Frank is curled in on himself against it, almost post-coital. 

This matters, whether Frank likes it or not. The other versions of them will just have to deal with it.

“If you could look through the mirror,” Frank asks, “what do you think our parallels are doing?”

Gerard’s mind immediately flicks through a dozen different scenarios he could never say out loud. Frank’s half-lidded eyes aren’t helping. “Desk jobs, probably,” he says, and hopes it won’t get called out for the cover it is.

Frank lets out a little snort even though it was a bad joke, and Gerard wonders, wildly, if there’s any parallel version of himself that isn’t as desperately in love. The thought makes his heart clench. It’s not  _ fair. _ It’s just not fair.

Maybe there are versions of them where things went the right way. Versions where Frank dated girls in high school, and maybe Gerard tried that out too, but they still went to prom together and made out in the backseat of this very Impala. Versions where they didn’t even meet until they were thirty, but then it was love at first sight, and they got married in a tiny field in upstate New York and honeymooned in Paris. Versions where they were each other’s boy-next-door, and then came knocking that sticky-sweet summer romance. Versions where Gerard was able to put his lips on every new tattoo that Frank got instead of just admiring them through the clear bandages. Versions where Gerard somehow plucked up the courage and said something years ago like he should have, instead of watching every girl and guy come and go from Frank’s life and knowing it’s too late.

Fuck, he doesn’t even need that. He’d readily take a version where he never falls in the first place. So long as it stops his throat from going dry every time Frank so much as smiles.

He must be making a face, because Frank says, “What’re you thinking about?”

“That it’s fucking cold out,” Gerard answers, because he’s never going to be brave. Not in this universe, not in the next. “Drive me home?”


End file.
